EA To Hold Star Wars License For Next 10 Years

25Nov

Blake Jorgensen, Chief financial officer at EA, recently discussed the Electronic Arts partnership with Disney and Star Wars at a UBS Conference, revealing that EA will control the video-game aspect of the award-winning franchise for the next decade. Widely considered to be one of the most hated publishers in the industry, Star Wars fans didn’t hold back as they expressed their disappointment with EA obtaining the video-game rights.

So it’s safe to say that confirmation of a 10 year deal is likely to stir those negative emotions yet again.

“We’ve done movie games over the years and we wanted to make sure that we weren’t doing a movie game – i.e. a game based on the movie. The beauty of the Star Wars franchise is that it’s so broad and so deep you don’t have to do a movie game – you can do a game that’s very focused on the world that’s been created around Star Wars.”

He also went on to explain that many titles will be released alongside the new movies but will not necessarily be based on those movies. The only title on the horizon at the moment is Star Wars: Battlefront, a third-person MMO-esque title that fans have been begging to see.

When asked about the $200 million Star Wars: The Old Republic Jorgensen said:

“Yes the original expectations obviously were very, very large and obviously the multiplayer MMO world has – the popularly has come down over time and we tried to restructure the Star Wars business to better match the economics.

“It’s a great business that’s very repeatable. We brought the economics in line so it’s a profitable business for us.

“…And as the Star Wars franchises start to grow with Disney’s investment, we’ll continue to see more excitement around that game as well as the other games that we’ll start to produce.”

Fans have a very strong love & hate relationship with EA and many are concerned that the Star Wars franchise could just become another annual title with more filler than killer. What are your thoughts? Post a comment below.